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“No, no, no, no, no!”
There were only two open seats at Avery’s table and one was right next to Aiden. This was not going to be pretty.
“Yo Grayson! What’s up with you, man?”
“Yeah, Gray, baby, what’s wrong?”
“She’ll eat her alive,” I muttered, and then, suddenly, I was on my feet, ignoring my friends and crossing over into the unpopular side of the cafeteria.
I got there just in time to watch Avery’s friend plunk her down in her usual seat at Aiden’s side, then take the seat next to her and say to the whole table, “Hey guys! How was everyone’s break? I got the new Celestron SkyProdigy 70 for Christmas! I’m going to have a stargazing party this weekend. You’re all invited.” She leaned around Avery to glare at Aiden. “Except for you.”
I had to give the girl props for that one, even though I had no clue what a Celestron SkyProdigy 70 was.
A few people gave nervous replies, but then Mindy cleared her throat. It was the tiniest little sound, and yet it silenced the entire table. Aiden’s shoulders hunched in response to it.
“Hey, um, Aves?” Aiden asked.
Mindy elbowed him, and he corrected his use of our nickname for Avery.
“I mean Avery? Um, do you think you could . . . um . . . I mean, would you mind—ow, ow, ow, ow!”
I’d grabbed his ear and yanked him back hard. “You utter one more word of that sentence, little brother, and I will kick your ass into next Tuesday.”
I had everyone’s attention, and I don’t just mean the dorks at Avery’s table.
I don’t know that I’d ever sounded more menacing, but I don’t think I’d ever been more out of my mind with rage either. The little pissant was about to ask Avery to leave her own lunch table and not sit by him anymore in front of all of her friends.
Aiden wisely hadn’t said another word, and all his friends were staring up at me completely terrified, except for Mindy. She just sort of blinked at me in disbelief. I’m pretty sure she’d assumed my family all loved her simply because she’d expected it of us.
“Aves, get up.”
“Huh?”
I had to work to control the anger in my voice. “Get up,” I repeated. “You are not sitting here anymore.”
Avery shook herself out of a daze and then scrambled obediently to her feet.
“Aiden, grow some balls you whipped bastard.” I let go of his ear with a little push, snapping him back into his seat. Then I glared at the girl next to him. “Mindy.” She paled when I spoke her name. “Avery is a hundred times the person you will ever be. If you say a single unkind thing to her or about her to anyone ever, you will be socially crucified. Get me? I will make it my personal mission in life to ruin you.”
She stared up at me in disbelief, but she looked scared. She should. I wasn’t kidding, and she seemed like the kind of person who cared very much about her reputation.
Next, I pointed a finger at Avery’s chubby little friend who’d dragged her to her table. “And you . . .” The girl flinched and looked like she was about to vomit. I felt bad because I hadn’t meant to scare her. “You seem pretty cool. Thanks for looking out for my girl. Keep up the good work.”
With that, I grabbed Avery’s hand and dragged her back toward my table on the other side of the cafeteria.
“Grayson!” Avery pleaded in a shocked whisper. “What are you doing?”
“You deserve better than that, Aves. You eat lunch with me from now on, okay?”
“Um . . .” She was still trying to put on the breaks. “That is really sweet of you and all, Grayson, but I don’t know. I mean I don’t exactly fit in with your friends. I’m . . . I’m . . .”
“You’re what?” Her insecurity was frustrating. She was worth more than she thought of herself. She needed to understand that.
She gulped. “Well, you know, I’m not popular.”
I stopped only because she was terrified and about to have another panic attack. “Aves, you’ll be fine. My friends will be cool. You’ll see.”
“I don’t know. I think I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t turn out so well for me.”
I smiled at that, even though she hadn’t meant it to be fu
She didn’t look entirely convinced, but she wasn’t going to hyperventilate anymore, either.
“You’re all about experiments and stuff,” I said. “So let’s do an experiment. Come eat lunch with me, at least for today, and let me introduce you to my friends. We will put Animal Planet to the test, and if I can’t have all of my friends completely enamored with you by the end of lunch, then I’ll back off and you can take your one cool friend and go hide out in the science lab every lunch for the rest of the year.” Geez, that sounded awful. I really hoped she didn’t do that. “Come on, what do you say?”
She gazed up at me, and in her current post-trauma daze said the last thing I ever expected. “I’m surprised you know a word like enamored.”
I burst out laughing and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “Yeah, three syllables is pretty much my limit.”
Avery didn’t protest anymore as I dragged her over to my friends, but she started to panic when we reached the table. I suppose I couldn’t blame her, considering my friends were all sitting there gaping at me as if I’d lost my mind and was introducing them to a piece of scum I got on my shoe while I was over in no-man’s land.
“Guys, this is Avery,” I said conversationally. “Everybody shove down and make some room for her.” I paused and gave Avery a grin, hoping to break some of the tension. “Unless you want to sit on my lap?”
I’m sure deep inside her somewhere she knew I was only teasing her, but she looked at me with eyes as big as baseballs and frantically shook her head. Her stupid panic was taking over.
I knew this might be an issue. Avery’s anxiety was legitimate. She was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder a few years back. She even took medication for it. The drugs allowed her to come to school—they’d talked about homeschooling her when she hit middle school and started having too many problems—but even the medicine couldn’t fix everything.
Avery didn’t handle change well, and meeting strangers was almost impossible. That my friends were all seniors and the most popular kids in school had to be making this scarier for her too. Then there was the fact that we were both the main focus of everyone in the cafeteria right now because I’d caused a scene. I kicked myself for that one, but it was too late now. I couldn’t undo it, so instead I tried to help her come back from freak-out mode.
She seemed to do better when all she could see was my eyes, so I grabbed her cheeks and pulled her face close to mine. “Remember what we talked about with the whole breathing thing? You’ve got to do it, Aves.” I prompted her by taking a deep breath, and eventually she copied the action. After a few more I smiled at her. “You good now?” It was the same thing I’d asked her in the shower, and I think we were both remembering that, because her cheeks turned pink as she nodded.
I sat her down at the table next to me and tucked her safely into my side. She shook a little as she clung to me, but she didn’t lose it. I was proud of her for regaining control of herself. For a second there I didn’t think she was going to make it.
I was going to have to be very careful about this transition, but there was no way I could leave her to deal with Aiden and Mindy on her own. That would get her pulled from school in a matter of days.
“Well done, Aves,” I whispered as I planted a kiss on the side of her head. “Hardest part’s over now.”